Philanthropy, 2008-2018
Ink and Conté Pencil on Arches paper of 350 gs.
122 x 85 cm.
shown for the first time in a Personal Exhibition at La Casona Gallery (Genesis Art Galleries), Havana.
“Unlike solidarity, which is horizontal and exercised as equals, charity is practiced from the top to down and never alters power relationships nor a bit”.
Eduardo Galeno
Art of simulation, poses and fallacies
Although the term refers perhaps to the best of human beings: solidarity, altruism and disinterest, “Philanthropy” here alludes to grotesque strategies of appearance and simulation; manipulation, institutionalized demagogy and regurgitated with a stench of love for others. No, Philanthropy here alludes to the hermetically isolated, to masks or concealments and speaks of poses and fallacies as supposed instituted truths. It speaks of transmutations and metamorphoses as alternatives to authoritarian soliloquies; it speaks of weightlessness -what hangs and is not defined; what is out of our reach to be named or modified- and of solitude… it speaks, in short, from the oblivion of our own forgetfulness.
This series of drawings is very closely linked to the most recent events in my personal life. That is why the diving helmet, as a symbol of the imprisoned… and as head covering, also alludes to the brain and thought to refer to the unreason and emptiness of meaning that generates such isolation. Art of simulation, frustration and alienation.